Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

TODAY. Why I am really a CONSERVATIVE, and you should be, too.

Years ago, when I was a member of the Australian Labor Party, I was shocked when someone accused me of being really a conservative at heart. Sacrilege! to a Leftie, to be given such an accusation!

Now I know that it is true.

Conservative – “holding traditional values.”

Conservation – “seeking the proper use of nature, a careful preservation and protection of natural resources to prevent exploitation, pollution, destruction, or neglect.”

It is fashionable, and of course, attention-grabbing in the media – to condemn things that are “old” and claim that “youth opinion” and “feelings” (rather than facts) are what matter , to downgrade our institutions of justice, and representative democracy that have served us well over time.

How is it that now there is worldwide acceptance of the idea that Donald Trump, and indeed the USA Republican Party, the Tories in Britain, and the Australian Liberal-National Coalition are CONSERVATIVES?

They are not conservative at all. They are out to wreck the natural environment, in the interests of a few rich corporations. They are out to wreck the social environment in spurning domestic courts and other legal institutions, like the International Court of Justice. They have attitudes of unfairness to non-white people, indigenous people, refugees, at times of suppression of women’s rights, especially, over their own bodies. This is not conservative. This is RADICAL – uprooting Christian values, and the natural world.

Admittedly, there was a time when the Western world held cruel “Christian” values, – like divine right of kings, slavery, racism, severe suppression of women’s rights, of religious and political rights…. Hanging on to those ideas was then conservatism.

But that’s a while back. In Western countries, values like Christian ideas of equal human rights, compassion and fairness, and also proper care of land, water, and animals – have been around for a long time now.

And that’s why we need to be conservatives There’s really no point in being left-wing or right-wing. No point in slavishly supporting your political party. A genuine conservativism is in looking beyond all the guff, and using those common sense traditional values. The political parties seem to get ever closer together, in the radical new doctrine of ever-increasing profit as the main purpose in life.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Christina reviews | Leave a comment

Dutton’s perks for nuclear plan

April 2, 2024, The Australian, Simon Benson; Political Editor

Peter Dutton is poised to release a major incentive package for coal communities to move from coal-fired power stations to nuclear energy, promising higher paying jobs and industry energy subsidies, following a US report that found the coal-to-nuclear transition pumped millions of dollars into regions that adopted them.
The Australian understands the Coalition will release the first major plank of its nuclear energy plan within weeks after identifying six or more potential sites, primarily in Queensland and NSW.

The Liberal leader will address a small business conference on Wednesday to promote the Coalition’s nuclear plan as the only proven technology that emits zero emissions while providing cheap, consistent and clean power as a source of baseload power to firm up renewables.
A report by the US Department of Energy released on Monday confirmed it would look to replace its fleet of coal-fired power plants with nuclear reactors, citing significant economic benefits to the local communities who agreed to the transition………………………………………..

Coalition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien confirmed that a Coalition package that would incentivise local coal communities would be announced before the May budget.
He said that “social licence” would be key to a future rollout of coal-to-nuclear with gas as a transition baseload energy provider.
Mr Dutton has flagged that the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan would provide incentive packages, including potential subsidised electricity prices for local industries as well as new infrastructure.
A key element of the packages would be transition arrangements for coal plant workers to upgrade to higher-paid jobs in nuclear plants………………..

Former Victoria Liberal Party President Michael Kroger says Peter Dutton has to show why “life will improve” under his government, in order to win the next election………………….

Mr Dutton will tell the Council of Small Business Australia conference that under its current approach, the government couldn’t credibly meet its 2050 net zero emissions target.
“That is why a Coalition government will ramp up domestic gas production to make energy more affordable and reliable and to help transition our economy to new energy systems,” he will say.
“And that is why we want Australia to move towards adopting the latest nuclear power technologies.
“Nuclear is the only proven technology which emits zero emissions, which can firm up renewables, and which provides cheap, consistent and clean power………………………………………….
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/peter-dutton-to-reveal-key-details-of-going-nuclear/news-story/87fc2f81063750adfd93a0c802d7c0e4

April 4, 2024 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

A hard job for the Australian government to find credible spruikers for a nuclear waste dump

Nobody wants a nuclear waste dump, By The Canberra Times, April 2 2024,  https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8576489/nuclear-waste-disposal-woes-in-australia/

One would think, given the Australian continent is second only to Antarctica in terms of low population density, it would be easier to develop a nuclear waste dump here than almost anywhere else.

COMMENT. Why on Earth would Australia want a nuclear waste dump? Just because it has space?

Unfortunately, due in large part to a series of hubristic decisions by former governments, that is not the case.

It is now more than two decades since plans for a nuclear waste facility at Woomera had to be abandoned. A subsequent proposal to site a national storage facility at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory fell over 10 years later.

Then, after more than seven years of research and planning, the former Coalition government’s push to use farmland near Kimba in South Australia was derailed last July and August after traditional owners took their case to the Federal Court and won.

The court set the 2021 site declaration aside on the grounds that not only had the traditional owners not been consulted, they had been deliberately excluded from the consultation process.

According to Ian Lowe, emeritus professor of environment and science at Griffith University, the process had been doomed from the start by the government’s heavy-handed approach.

“The ‘decide and defend’ model where a government decides to put radioactive waste somewhere and then attempts to defend it against the community hasn’t worked anywhere,” he said.

Opposition to the proposal, which left Kimba bitterly divided, was fuelled by revelations that even though it had been billed as a “low level” nuclear waste dump, once up and running Kimba would be used to “temporarily” store intermediate-grade material until a suitable “permanent” disposal site could be found.

While millions of Australians have benefited from radioactive medical isotypes created at the former HIFAR reactor and its replacement, the Opal reactor, at Lucas Heights nobody wants the leftover waste in their backyard. And that’s perfectly understandable.

Unfortunately the temporary storage facility at Lucas Heights, which holds some of the 5000 cubic metres of waste Australia has accumulated at about 100 locations over more than six decades, is reportedly running out of space. It apparently won’t be able to accept some classes of material as early as 2027.

COMMENT. Confusion here between the “low level” medical wastes, mainly with short half-lives of radioactivity, stored at various locations across Australia, and the “higher level” long-lasting wastes resulting from the nuclear reactor itself.

Plenty of space at Lucas Heights for continued storage of these more dangerous reactor wastes.

This has put the Albanese government on the spot. As a result it has opted to go on the front foot in terms of damage control by seeking expressions of interest for a public relations team able to manage the “high outrage” national conversation about nuclear waste disposal.

The multi-million dollar question, given Kimba had been costed at $300 million, is what process will be followed in selecting the next site. Will Resources Minister Madeleine King revisit the six sites originally shortlisted almost a decade ago? Or will fresh expressions of interest from interested landowners be sought?

And, most importantly, what consultation process does the government intend to follow? Will it repeat the “decide and defend” mistakes of past governments or will it listen to the experts including Professor Lowe who urge the highest possible level of community engagement?

Given, as he has said, that under the AUKUS agreement Australia is to manage high-level waste from the future nuclear submarine fleet this is going to be a very hard sell. Australia has come a long way since the 1950s when the Menzies government, admittedly at the height of the Cold War, gave Britain carte blanche to test its nuclear weapons in the outback.

Whoever wins the “high outrage” PR tender is going to have a big job ahead of them.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Coalition to release nuclear incentive package

Sky News 3 Apr 24

Peter Dutton has flagged higher paying jobs and energy subsidies for coal-fired power stations that move to nuclear energy.

Sky News Australia understands the Opposition Leader could release part of his party’s nuclear energy plan within weeks.

This comes after flagging more potential sites along the East Coast.

He is attending a small business conference in Sydney today to promote the Coalition’s nuclear plan……https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/coalition-to-release-nuclear-incentive-package/video/fad99f67779685ace4f51b1e1ffbf58d

April 4, 2024 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Are US, Israel Heading for Divorce?

It’s unclear how much longer Netanyahu can hold on to power in Israel in the face of a torrent of bad news for Israel about declining international support for — and dire economic consequences derived from — its ongoing military operation in Gaza

Scott Ritter, Washington, Apr 1, 2024,  Energy Intelligence Group,  https://www.energyintel.com/0000018e-9900-d183-abef-9f430f020000

The crisis in Gaza that has been ongoing since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel has resulted in a sea change in political opinion on the question of Israeli security prerogatives and Palestinian statehood. While international opinion has decisively shifted to the Palestinian cause, Israel has until recently been ably backstopped by the US, which has wielded its veto at the UN Security Council to shield Israel from any binding consequences. But shifting global priorities, coupled with turbulent domestic political realities, have caused the US stance on Israel to shift, creating the possibility of Israel, for the first time, standing alone in the crosshairs of global condemnation.

On Mar. 25, the 10 non-permanent members of the UN Security Council tabled a draft resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan, the immediate release of hostages and humanitarian access. The resolution was the latest in a succession of similar calls from the Security Council seeking an end to the violence that has wracked Gaza and the region since Oct. 7.

Prior to the Mar. 25 draft resolution being tabled, all previous efforts to bring an end to violence in Gaza had failed, with the draft texts either vetoed by the US or, on one occasion, Russia and China. But the latest call for a ceasefire passed muster, receiving 14 “yes” votes, zero “no” votes, and one abstention — from the US.

The Security Council resolution has no enforcement clause, making it little more than a formal notice of disapproval by the UN of Israeli actions. The administration of President Joe Biden made it clear that it continued to blame Hamas over Israel when it comes to the root cause of the current crisis, and that the US supported the overall Israeli objective of destroying Hamas both militarily and politically. Circumstances at home and abroad, however, raise questions about the sustainability of this policy position.

Changing Times

The Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu is the most conservative in its history, the byproduct of a desperate politician (Netanyahu) seeking to bury his personal legal problems under the weight of governing what has, for several election cycles, become an increasingly ungovernable state. To accomplish this, Netanyahu made common cause with Israel’s extreme right-wing political element, crafting a coalition that not only rejected the notion of a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian question but also embraced the idea of a greater Israel that would do away with the idea of a Palestinian state in general.

Israel was able to capitalize on the general apathy of the global collective to the plight of the Palestinian people, allowing the dream of a viable Palestinian state to be supplanted by a road map toward regional economic connectivity and prosperity defined by the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world. This generated schemes such as the India-Middle East Economic Corridor (Imec), an ambitious sea-rail collaboration designed to link India with Europe via the Gulf Arab states, Jordan and Israel.

The Hamas attack of Oct. 7 and Israel’s heavy-handed response changed all that. Imec is dead in the water, alongside any notion of normalized relations with Arab countries until the question of Palestinian statehood is resolved. The resilience of Hamas militarily and politically has compelled Israel to undertake military action that has resulted in the deaths in Gaza of over 30,000 civilians (some 19,000 of whom are children). This has prompted allegations of genocide presented to the International Court of Justice. Cities across the world are full of protesters condemning Israel and praising the cause of a free and independent Palestine. More and more US cities are hosting such actions.

The tidal wave of public sentiment has moved the needle of government policy in many nations. The US State Department has put the White House on notice that the US is in danger of losing the support of the Global South at a time when US policy objectives are centered on slowing the pace of multipolarity and preserving the rules-based international order that serves as the centerpiece of US foreign and national security policy. The US abstention at the Security Council reflected a new reality, where the US must weigh its own foreign policy objectives against the established principle of unquestioned support for Israel.

Local Politics

The US and Israel could attempt to ride out the storm of international protest, waiting for a world that had long been indifferent to the plight of the Palestinian people to lose interest again and shift its attention to a new crisis — in a world fully capable of generating one at a moment’s notice.

But as Tip O’Neill, a former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, once quipped, “all politics is local,” and the Gaza crisis is no exception. The UN abstention was an attempt at damage control which, under normal circumstances, might have allayed the concerns of people more interested in words over action. But 2024 is a US presidential election year, with incumbent Joe Biden set to face former President Donald Trump in a race that is expected to be every bit as heated — or more — than the tumultuous 2020 election.

The 2020 election, like the 2016 one before it, was won on the margins, in so-called “battleground states” where the difference between winning and losing came down to a few thousand votes derived from distinct demographics. One such demographic is the Muslim-American community, which is overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

The UN abstention was an effort to dampen the negative feelings of this community. But void of any meaningful follow-on action by the Biden administration to enforce the will of the Security Council, this won’t be enough to secure this demographic come election time. As a result, the US political theater is witnessing previously unimaginable scenes, such as the ardently pro-Israeli Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calling for the removal of Netanyahu or Biden threatening to withhold military aid, something previously unimaginable in US politics, should Israel not yield to the demand for a ceasefire.

It’s unclear how much longer Netanyahu can hold on to power in Israel in the face of a torrent of bad news for Israel about declining international support for — and dire economic consequences derived from — its ongoing military operation in Gaza. Netanyahu, who failed in his bid to cloak himself with judicial immunity, faces not just political defeat but also personal ruin should he be removed from office.

Netanyahu’s political viability is linked to his ability to sustain the current conflict in the hope that he can pull a miraculous victory over Hamas out of the hat. Netanyahu, however, is running into a brick wall of US political opposition where the presidential political imperative is starting to trump loyalty to Israel. No Israeli prime minister has survived without US political support. And no US presidential candidate has prevailed in an election where the cause of Israel was forsaken. The question now is who will blink first, Netanyahu or Biden — the answer to which remains very much up in the air.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Killing Humanitarians: Israel’s War on Aid Workers in Gaza

April 3, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark,  https://theaimn.com/killing-humanitarians-israels-war-on-aid-workers-in-gaza/

Eulogies should rarely be taken at face value. Plaster saints take the place of complex individuals; faults transmute into golden virtues. But there was little in the way of fault regarding Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom’s messianic purpose, whose tireless work for the charity, World Central Kitchen (WCK) in northern Gaza had not gone unnoticed. Sadly, the Australian national, along with six other members of WCK, were noticed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) around midnight of April 1 and 2 and targeted in a strike that killed all of them. 

Other members of the slain crew included Polish citizen Damian Sobol, three British nationals whose names are yet to be released, a US-Canadian dual citizen, and the driver and translator Saif Abu Taha.

The charity workers had been unloading food supplies from Cyprus that had been sent via sea in a designated “deconflicted” area. All three vehicles, two armoured and one “soft skin”, sported the WCK logo. Even more galling for the charity was the fact that coordinating efforts between WCK and the IDF had taken place as it left the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the individuals had been responsible for uploading over 100 tonnes of humanitarian food aid.

On April 2, Haaretz reported that three missiles had been fired in rapid succession at the convoy by a Hermes 450 UAV on direction of a unit guarding the aid transport route. The troops in question claimed to have spotted what they thought was an armed figure riding a truck that had entered one of the aid storage areas with three WCK vehicles. The armed figure, presumed to be a Hamas militant, never left the warehouse in the company of the vehicles.

In a public relations war Israel is increasingly losing, various statements of variable quality and sincerity could only confirm that fact. IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari stated that he had spoken to WCK founder Chef José Andrés “and expressed the deepest condolences of the Israel Defense Forces to the families and the entire World Central Kitchen family.”

Hagari went on to add the IDF’s expression of “sincere sorrow to our allied nations who have been doing and continue to do so much to assist those in need.” This was a bit rich given the programmatic efforts of the IDF and Israeli officials to stifle and strangulate the provision of aid into the Gaza Strip, from the logistical side of keeping land crossings closed and delaying access to existing ones, to aggressive efforts to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). 

As for the operation itself, Hagari announced that “the highest levels” of military officialdom had been “reviewing the incident” to comprehend the circumstances that led to the deaths. “We will get to the bottom of this and we will share our findings transparently.” Again exalting the prowess of his organisation in investigating such matters, he promised that the army’s General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – yet another independent body designed to give the impression of thoroughness and impartiality – would look into this “serious incident” to “reduce the risk of such an event from occurring again.” 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a better barometric reading of the mood, and it was certainly not one of grieving or feeling aggrieved. The killings had merely been “a tragic instance of our forces unintentionally harming innocent people in the Gaza Strip. It happens in war.” Israel would “investigate it” and had been “in contact with the governments and we will do everything we can so that it doesn’t happen again.”

This is mightily optimistic given the butcher’s toll of 173 aid workers from UNRWA alone, with 196 humanitarians said to have died as of March 20, 2024 since October 7 last year. Aid workers have been killed in IDF strikes despite the regular provision of coordinates on their locations. Be it through reckless indifference, conscious intent, or a lack of competence, the morgues continue to be filled with humanitarian workers.

A bristling CEO of WCK, Erin Gore, proved blunter about the implications of the strike. “This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organisations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war.”

Project HOPE’s Executive Vice President, Chris Skopec, drew attention to the obvious, yet repeatedly neglected fact in the Gaza conflict that aid workers are protected by international humanitarian law. Gaza had become “one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a humanitarian worker. This is unacceptable and demands accountability through the International Criminal Court.”

Responsibility for the killings is unlikely to translate into accountability, let alone any public outing of the individuals involved. This is not to say that such exercises are impossible, even with Israel not being a member of the International Criminal Court. The pageantry of guilt can still be pursued. 

When Malaysian Airlines MH17 was downed over Ukraine in July 2014 by a Buk missile, killing all 298 on board, international efforts of terrier-like ferocity were initiated against those responsible for the deadly feat. The MH17 Joint Investigation Team (JIT), comprising the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine, identified the missile as having come from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian armed forces from Kursk. Four suspects were identified. Of the four, one was acquitted, with the district Court of The Hague handing down three life sentences in November 2022 along with an order to pay over €16 million in compensation to the victims. The individuals remain at large, and the Kremlin largely unmoved, but the point was made. 

In this case, any hope for seeking an external accounting for the event is likely to be kept in-house. Excuses of error and misidentification are already filling press releases and conferences. Doing so will enable the IDF to continue its program of quashing the Palestinian cause while pursuing an undisclosed war against those it considers, publicly or otherwise, to be its ameliorating collaborators. With an announcement by various humanitarian groups, including WCK, Anera and Project Hope, that their operations will be suspended following the killings, starvation, as a policy in Gaza, can receive its official blessing.  

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | , , , , | Leave a comment